So I finally took the plunge and purchased a Nook last month. I’ve had it for about a month now.

I like it. I admit it.

Pros:

People have been giving me ebooks for various reasons (reviews, etc.). This makes them much easier to read. It’s fairly comfy. I’m not having too much trouble with the reading experience onscreen. It’s okay.

So. Many. BOOKS! ❤ Without having to find shelf space!

I’m downloading a few public domain novels via Google Books that I had not gotten around to reading yet. Also, probably good for me. Even if it cuts into “current things I ought to be reading.” The temptation to reread some old favorites is also overwhelming.

I have failed to sell my soul completely to Amazon. This is probably a good thing. Our only bookstore in town is a Barnes & Noble (other than the college bookstore–no indies here!), and we end up ordering from Amazon a fair amount between conventions. (We still buy at conventions, too.) The way I deal with the choice between two chains that may or may not be evil (since I don’t have the option of NOT shopping at them at all) is to split the difference and shop at both, thus not giving either a competitive advantage with my hard-earned moolah. (Because MY money will make the difference. Riiight.)

We’re turning off the tv in the evenings more often, and reading more. This is probably good for me in the long run. And has caused us to delay upgrading our cable, which is probably also not that bad for us.

I expect it will get a decent amount of use as our travel computeresque-not-a-laptop-thingamabob when we are conventioning at places with free wifi. So I might actually be able to tweet and stuff when on the road more easily than I can with my phone.

Cons:

As expected, it’s much easier to pay for an ebook than to get a free one onto the Nook by sideloading it from, say, a library ebook account. Oddly enough. *sigh* But one of my goals here is to use the ereader as a way to read things that I want to read, but don’t necessarily want to KEEP, so that I can save shelf space for the dead tree versions of things I want to keep. So, still working on that.

I am still figuring out how to get library ebooks. I started the process, got distracted, and now need to find the time to sit down and figure out how to do it correctly. I expect to use this feature quite a bit once I set it up for real. Michael has been busy putting together the Hugo Voter Packet, so he’s been on the laptop quite a bit (which is right and good and proper), but it means that I haven’t had the opportunity to sort out this stuff.

I am realizing that there will never be enough time to read all the things I want to read. People may think that being a librarian means sitting around and reading all the time, and having an ereader means that I WISH IT WERE TRUE so I could sit around and read ALL THE TIME. Not that I don’t want to do that all the time with paper books, too, but having ebooks means that I’m doing it In The Future!

Still trying to work myself up to actually purchase things like apps and ebooks. Much of my focus has been on free content, which is FINE, but only goes so far.

I also need to figure out the whole “can use it as a media player” thing. I know I can, I just haven’t taken the time to sort out how best to achieve that. But my goal is to always have Certain Things I Never Tire Of Rewatching available on my Nook. Mmm…Colin Firth on demand… *sighs*